Demarre and Anthony McGill came up with a lot of people watching out for them.

First of all were
their parents, both teachers. Growing up on Chicago's South Side, they
had to fend off plenty of negative influences, said Anthony McGill, 35.

But Demarre McGill, 39, said their parents made sure they were kept out of trouble.

Instead they were in a local youth orchestra full
of talented young African-American musicians like themselves, all from
the South Side.

There were music teachers and older students.

For Demarre McGill, there was internationally-renowned flutist Sir James Galway.

McGill recalled meeting him in Chicago at a cafe.
The young flutist asked Galway, one of his heroes, for his cadenza on
the Khachaturian flute concerto. Galway apologized, saying it hadn't
been published.

Some days later, McGill received a package from Switzerland. It contained a manuscript with the cadenza.

They had so many people who watched out for them
that now being models for younger musicians "is part of us," Demarre
McGill said.

Anthony McGill recalled being approached by a
young, classical African-American musician who said his mother put the
McGill Brothers' photo up on the refrigerator.

The McGill Brothers were on campus Monday as the Dorothy E. and DuWayne H. Hansen Series artists.

They met with students, taught a master class and performed an evening recital.

Charleston
SC September 30, 2014The Second AnnualColour of Music Festival
(COMF) October 22-26, 2014
showcases the breadth and influence of blacks on the classical music
world past and present. The five-day festival features top black
musicians, vocalists, and orchestra leaders from across
the globe performing piano, organ, voice recitals, and chamber works
performed in historic venues across the City of Charleston, South
Carolina.

A major highlight the Festival is guest appearances by 15-year old cello prodigy and national competition award-winner
Sterling Elliott, a member of the family known as the Elliott Quartet of Virginia. He will perform with his quartet, in association with the Color of Music
Virtuosi pre-Festival event, and as part of the Festival’s Masterworks program as a soloist.

featuring
works by black composers Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges and Dominique
Legendre and French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Finally Sterling Elliott
will perform Victor Herbert’s Cello Concerto No 2 in E Minor Op. 20
under the direction of COMF Music Director Marlon Daniel and the Colour
of
Music Festival Orchestra as part of Charlestonia: A Folk Rhapsody Masterworks Program
Saturday, October 25 at 8:00pm, Memminger Auditorium in downtown Charleston.

STERLING ELLIOTT, cello

The First Prize Winner of the 2014 National Sphinx Competition, fifteen-year old
Sterling Elliott began his cello studies at the age of three. The
youngest of three siblings, he did not originally want to play the
cello; he wanted to play the violin like his older brother and sister.

He was accepted into
the Peninsula Youth Orchestra when at age 6 and at age 10 he became the
Orchestra’s principal cellist. He also serves as principal cellist for
the District Honors Orchestra.

Sterling is the
Grand Prize winner of the First Presbyterian Young Artist Competition,
winner of the 2013 York River Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition
and received a full scholarship to the Eastern Music
Festival where he was a winner of their 2012 Concerto Competition. In
August 2013, he appeared on NPR’s
From the Top where he was announced as a recipient of the Jack
Kent Cooke Award. Recently he has performed alongside pop superstar
Jennifer Hudson.
Sterling plays a Tupper cello generously loaned to him by Carlsen Cello Foundation.

The Second AnnualColour of
Music Festival (COMF) October 22-26, 2014
showcases the breadth and influence of blacks on the classical music
world past and present. The five-day festival features
top black musicians, vocalists, and orchestra leaders from across the
globe performing piano, organ, voice recitals, and chamber works
performed in historic venues across the City of Charleston SC.

A key feature of the 2014 Festival is the performance of works by three
noted living black female composers: Nigerian-American
Nkeiru Okoye, Trinidadian Dominique Le Gendre, and New York-based, South Carolina native
Joyce Solomon Moorman. Additional works by female black composers will feature
Margaret Bond’s (1913-1972) I’ve KnownRivers and Florence Beatrice Smith Price’s (1887-1953)
Night,Dances in the Canebrakes and Suite No. 1 for Organ.

Additional
highlights on black female composers’ influences will be front and
center on Thursday, October 23 at 8:30am with a special talk presented
by
Dr. Louise Toppin of the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill on black female composers’ contributions to classical music with
acclaimed violinist and COMF Concertmaster Jessica McJunkins providing
musical accompaniment.

An established voice
in new music, her works have been performed by the Philadelphia
Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Virginia Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony,
Grand Rapids Symphony, New Jersey Symphony and others.
She has garnered numerous awards, commissions and commendations from
MEET THE COMPOSER, the Virginia Symphony, MetLife Creative Connections,
John Duffy Composer Institute, Composer’s Collaborative, Inc., the Walt
Whitman Project, Yvar Mikhashov Trust for New
Music and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
(ASCAP). After penning her first composition at age 13 and winning first
prize at a national competition, she pursued training as a composer.

Okoye’s best known works include
Brooklyn Cinderella (2011, commissioned by American Opera Projects), Songs of Harriet Tubman (2007, on the CD Heart on a Wall),
Phillis Wheatley (2005 recorded by the Moscow Symphony), Voices Shouting Out (2002, commissioned by the Virginia Symphony);
African Sketches (2007-08, published in the Oxford University Press Anthology of Piano Music of the African Diaspora); and
The Genesis. She holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of
Music and Rutgers University and currently serves on the composition
faculty at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

A world premiere will be showcased at the 2014 Colour of Music Festival.

Based in London,
Trinidad-born composer Dominique Le Gendre has written music extensively
for theatre, dance, film, television and radio drama for BBC Radio 3
and 4. She composed and produced music for all
38 Shakespeare plays recorded for audio, “The Complete Arkangel
Shakespeare, “directed by Clive Brill. Her musical language has been
described as luminous, glittering and distinctive, reflecting the rich
multi-culture of her Caribbean upbringing.

In 2004 she was invited to become an Associate Artist of the Royal Opera
House, (ROH2) Covent Garden, who commissioned her full-length opera
“Bird of Night," directed by Irina Brown and premiered in October 2006
at the ROH Linbury Theatre. Her chamber works
have been commissioned and performed by The ROH chamber soloists,
Philharmonia Orchestra, Manning Camerata, Lontano Orchestra, Tête-a-Tête
Opera, Ibis Ensemble and British cellist Tony Woollard among others.

She has been Associate Artist to the Manning Camerata led by ROH
concertmaster, Peter Manning with whom she collaborated on the Dramma
per Musica of Seamus Heaney’s “The Burial at Thebes,” directed by Derek
Walcott and premiered in 2008 at Liverpool8 and Shakespeare's
Globe Theatre in London.

In 2012 she
co-curated with Melanie Abrahams " London is the Place for Me” a
two-week festival to celebrate Trinidad/Tobago's 50th Anniversary. In
2013 Dominique was commissioned by New York’s Ensemble du
Monde to premiere a new string quartet "Le Génie Humain" at the
Festival of Afro Caribbean Composers in the Bahamas which will also be
performed at the Colour of Music Festival.

Grew up in Columbia,
South Carolina and earned B. A. degree from Vassar College, a M. A. T.
from Rutgers University, an M. F. A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and
Ed. D. degree from Columbia University.

Recipient of the
ASCAP Standards Panel Annual Award from 1990-2006. Her compositions have
been performed by Lilan Parrot, Triad Chorale, Wilson Moorman, LonGar
Ebony Ensemble, the Woodhill Chamber Ensemble,
the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble, After Dinner Opera Company,
Sandra Billingslea, the Plymouth Chorus and Orchestra, the Cygnus
Chamber Ensemble, the Moravian Philharmonic and the Philadelphia
Classical Symphony. Ms. Moorman was a winner of the Vienna
Modern Masters 1998 Millennium Commission Competition.

Her opera, “Elegies
for the Fallen,” received a special commendation from the Nancy Van de
Vate International Opera Competition for women composers in 2004. In
1997 she was appointed by the Governor of New
York to the Advisory Music Panel for the New York State Council on the
Arts. Currently she is an Associate Professor in the Music and Art
Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

The full Colour of Music Festival schedule can be accessed from the
COMF Brochure.
Full schedule and tickets online: www.colourofmusic.org
or by calling (866) 811-4111.
Series packages with
discounts up to 30% off are available. For all-inclusive packages for
college professors and administrators and/or for groups of ten (10) or
more use code:
GR. $7.00 for
schools/church youth groups. Tickets available at the door (credit card,
cash or check) one hour before each performance.

We are
thrilled to announce our 8th season of concerts in partnership with The
San Diego Museum of Art, which we're appropriately calling "The Song
Goes On" in salute to the resilience and spirit of the San Diego Opera.
The 2014-2015 season pays homage to the beauty and power of the human
voice and that timeless expression of the human spirit--opera. This
year's creative approach to programming will take concertgoers on a
season-long journey of classical music and song. The musical arc,
starting with ARIA and finishing with EPILOGUE, features the West Coast
premiere of a new work by Chris Brubeck (son of famed jazz musician Dave Brubeck), the return of The Myriad Trio, the Art of Élan debut of local soprano Priti Gandhi, and a performance by Art of Élan's first-ever "ensemble in residence," The Formosa Quartet.

All museum shows begin at 7PM
and are followed by "Encore at the Prado," where concertgoers are
invited to enjoy happy hour food and drinks with the musicians at The
Prado, right next door in Balboa Park.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

~Kate & Demarre

Art of Élan presents ARIA at The San

Diego Museum of Art

Tuesday, October 28th 7pm

soprano Priti Gandhi

aria: solo vocal piece with instrumental accompaniment

Art
of Élan's eighth season at The San Diego Museum of Art begins with an
engaging and varied program of lyrical works spanning four centuries,
including dramatic and colorful compositions by the provocative 34
year-old composer Nico Muhly and the Art of Élan debut of sparkling local soprano Priti Gandhi in Respighi's Il Tramonto, an enchanting setting of Shelley's poem The Sunset
for voice and string quartet. The program also features Argentinean
composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, Baroque master Henry Purcell (excerpts from
his opera The Fairy Queen), and Italian opera icon Giacomo Puccini's lush Chrysanthemums quartet.

Tickets available at the door, in advance at the Museum, or online HERE!!!

To purchase by phone, call the Museum Box Office at 619.232.7931. Ask for the season subscription discount!!

Our residency at ARTS...

Have you ever been to ARTS
(A Reason To Survive) in National City? This fall is your chance!! On
October 11th Art of Élan begins a 10-week residency with this fabulous
organization that believes in the power of the arts and creativity to
literally transform lives - especially those of kids. Consisting of
weekly workshops, where ARTS students and alumni have the opportunity to
work directly with Art of Élan musicians, the residency will culminate
with a unique multidisciplinary and collaborative concert on December
6th, featuring the music of Terry Riley,David Lang and select ARTS music students and apprentices.

To
make things even MORE exciting, arts advocate Carol Lazier and the
Stensrud Foundation have offered their support of this initiative with a
$5000 challenge grant. Any amount donated between now and our
culminating concert at ARTS on December 6th will be matched dollar for dollar, up to $5000.

Named for Dr. Eileen Southern (1920-2002), the Committee on Cultural
Diversity of the American Musicological Society began issuing student
travel grants in 1996. This is one aspect evidencing an aggiornamento
of AMS -- founded in 1934 -- which has taken place during the more
recent decades. The organization, which has published "JAMS" (Journal of the American Musicological Society) since 1948, for a long time defined its subjects along the tradition of European Musikwissenschaft of the times.

This was when the scholarly discipline was new in the United States.
Up to that time, Americans had been nourished by "music appreciation"
anecdotes and apocrypha such as retold by Sigmund Spaeth and Co., and
then by the more accurate accounts by European exiles -- Paul Henry
Láng, Manfred Bukofzer, Alfred Einstein, Willi Apel, and others -- who
brought with them the subjects of their investigations. For a long
period, musicology in America meant European music history (the work of
American-born Gustav Reece, as a monumental exemplar), perhaps
occasionally venturing out of the past to the seventeenth century (and
no, Monteverdi and Verdi were not the same!).

My
mentor, Paul Nettl, had escaped from the Nazis in his own
Czechoslovakia. His dedication to such modernists as Mozart, Beethoven,
and Bach did not inhibit him from consideration of the minorities and
his son, Bruno Nettl, became a major spokesman for ethnomusicology,
along with the new areas of inquiry the discipline obligated.
Imperialism was vanishing from cultural studies as it was on the
political scene.

In
compensation for the musical myopia, other groups examined not only
social matters and more recent music, but even gave thought to American
music. That subject had been out of bounds academically. Perhaps
Charles Ives might have been mentioned in the classroom, mainly because
of his quirks, but not Gershwin, and certainly not William Grant Still
or Harry Burleigh! Jazz had been prohibited in the practice rooms and
had been far from the curriculum -- never mind that the professors
worked their way through college on tenor sax. One school refused to
permit a student recitalist from playing Joplin as an encore, but a
counterpart of his character pieces by a European was allowed.

I
had been a consultant in the 1970s to a consortium of Black schools
that had completed a year's federally-funded renovation of their course
offerings. When I commented that jazz had not entered the discussion, I
was asked by a senor Black professor, "Do you really think a
Black school should be teaching jazz?" How things changed! When I was
at Peabody, Dean Eileen Cline designated my graduate course in Black
music among the requirements, justifying this even for those with
student visas because she believed that an American school should teach
American music also.

Along came the Bicentennial and with it, government funds.
Philosophies took a back seat to financial matters. The Rockefeller
Foundation began its series of New World Records, which served as a
remedial effort to provide colleges with audio materials for the newly
designed courses in American music, and the faculty had to invent a
syllabus on virgin territory. Eight years before the bandwagons started
up, we began to address Black issues in music, and information long
ignored began to be available to those interested. Footnotes could now
become chapters. Before too much longer, AMS began to broaden its
borders -- women and LGBT matters began to subvert the Gospel According
to St. Grout.

Articles in JAMS began to reflect this movement (to a large part
instigated by the University of Michigan's "Black Mafia") and now for
two decades, AMS has provided funds so a diversity of embryonic scholars
can travel to research sites, archives, and gatherings of established
professionals.

A perusal of this list of recipients should reveal those whose names
are now beginning to appear as recitalists and dissertation authors,
beneficiaries of this award; selection honored the intent of the
mission. A new list will be announced at the 2014 Milwaukee meeting of
AMS in November. Perhaps our parochial orientation might be excused as
we hope for more applicants from our HBCU schools, whose students should
be alerted to this opportunity.

The
Morgan State University choir most recently returned from an event at
James Madison University where the Morgan State University choir joined
forces with the James Madison choral ensembles in a concert kicking off a
national conference on African American poetry.

Morgan
and James Madison have enjoyed several opportunities for academic
exchanges. Over the years, we have had a Ph. D student in History
receive a one-year in residence teaching fellowship support toward the
completion of his/her dissertation. Morgan has sent at least four
students to James Madison as part of this relationship taking courses in
their respective majors for the semester. In November of 2011, members
from the Fine and Performing Arts Department visited James Madison
University in an effort to discover ways that the Fine and Performing
Arts department could partner with the College of Visual and Performing
Arts.

About a year ago the Dean of their
College of Visual and Performing Arts, George Sparks and I began
discussing the possibility of the Morgan choir singing with the JMU
choral ensembles to kick-off an event for their Furious Flower Poetry
Conference where African America poets from all over the country gather
to discuss and current trends in African American Poetry as well as
unveil some premiers of new works. This concert would feature music
that was inspired by poetry.

This past weekend
was this kick-off event which was a great one-day long exchange
opportunity for both schools. Please see attached the program from the
event. Also see a YouTube clip from one the two opening songs in the
concert - conducted first by their director, Jo-Anne van der Vat-Chromy
and then followed by me. Finally, see below an email from the choral
director at James Madison giving plaudits to choir for their
musicianship and character.

Best,

Eric

YouTube
link of opening two songs in concert: To Sit and Dream-Rosephanye
Powell; I've Just Come From the Fountain-André J.Thomas

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that our two University
collaboration would be THIS AMAZING - and I KNEW it would be GREAT! I
can't tell you how much we here at JMU have been talking about and
celebrating YOU, Dr. Conway and your AMAZING CHOIR!

As gorgeous and wonderful you are as a choir musically, I think
that the most amazing thing we are all celebrating is how LOVING you are
as a choir and as people. How do we say thank you for being so
completely open, transparent and wonderful? Your bus
arrived at 11:00 am and a light of the most mammoth proportions graced
our campus and performance hall for the entire day - and we are still
basking in that light even now at JMU - I know that we will for a very
long time.

Eric, you must be so incredibly proud of the program you have built
and the glory you create in every concert with your wonderful,
magnificent ensemble. You are a DCA to emulate and honor - what a
glorious job you are doing at Morgan State!

Dearest new friends in Baltimore - THANK YOU FOR THIS GLORIOUS
PROJECT - thank you for being you...and I hope you will remember that
JMU adores you and honors your brilliance, your musicianship, your
artistry and your journey. Thank you for sharing the
very best of you in all that you do and are. We have been blessed by
knowing you and by our collaboration.